Recently, many hospitals have begun to allow families to activate a MET if they feel the care team is not adequately addressing their concerns.
King was 18-months old when she died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, from medical errors and delays in escalation of care despite her family’s concerns.
As a result of the highly publicized death, the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh began a program called Condition HELP that allows families to activate a MET.
Families receive training on Condition HELP when the patient is admitted and are asked to voice concerns to their care team before activating the MET.
Composition of the teams may vary but often include one critical care attending physician or fellow, at least one nurse, and a respiratory therapist.
[12] Rates of hospital-wide mortality and respiratory and cardiac arrest, which are exceedingly rare and may or may not be preventable, are common outcome measures.
[13] Rapid response teams appear to decrease the rates of respiratory and cardiac arrest outside the intensive care unit.
Identified barriers to activating the MET include the primary team’s overconfidence in their ability to stabilize the patient, poor communication, hierarchal problems, and hospital culture.
[27][28][29] Interventions to overcome barriers include improved intradisciplinary staff education, protocol requiring activation when calling criteria are met, and use of “champions” to foster cultural change.
[32] The first pediatric RRS was implemented in 2005 by Tibballs, Kinney, and colleagues at Royal Children’s Hospital in Australia which included vital sign ranges that differed by age group.